NW Natural beginning demolition of landmark GasCo Building

It looks as if one of Portland's most beloved old buildings has reached the end of its lifespan.

NW Natural is beginning demolition this week on the Portland GasCo (or Portland Gas and Coke) building, a circa-1913 administrative structure on its Willamette River site near Linnton and the St. Johns Bridge. According to Melissa Moore, a spokesman for the company, demolition will take six to eight weeks.

"You might recall over the past two years that we met with a very nice community group and gave them the chance to raise the money to save the building, since we couldn’t charge our ratepayers for a non-utility item like that," Moore wrote by email. "Unfortunately despite their best efforts, they could only raise $4,000. So they told us in February that they would stop the effort. There is one remaining committee member, Scott Becker, who still wants to try to save it, but we’ve let him know multiple times that we are moving forward with demolition."

Becker, by the way, has a different version of the story, acknowledging that some but not all of the Save the Portland GasCo Building members abandoned the effort, but by no means had the group or its efforts effort ended.

Indeed, it would have been a tall order to raise in less than a year the $1.55-2.05 million that NW Natural was asking for. It's also true that the site, including the ground underneath the GasCo, was contaminated, and that NW Natural has been working for many years to clean it up. NW Natural clearly felt that it was obligated to continue with the cleanup, and that the GasCo building stood in the way.

Portland GasCo building (image via Friends of the GasCo)

Even so, the company's behavior was disappointing even if it wasn't surprising. Even if one acknowledges and accepts the logic of the company's unwillingness to charge rate-payers for GasCo preservation, and even if one gives credence to their openness in meeting with preservationists, it still seems like the company could have been more accommodating and creative about saving a building that people love, or at least preserving it as a ruin. This wasn't just an albatross for them; it was an opportunity to do something special.

I've also yet to hear NW Natural say that the land underneath the GasCo building is contaminated, and I've yet to hear that they have another building planned for the site.

And make no mistake: however long this building has sat empty, and no matter how unsuccessful a group of grassroots preservationists were in meeting the corporation's gargantuan financial demands, this is a work of architecture that has long occupied a place in the cultural imagination. It's a building that people loved, even if only from afar. When I first wrote about the GasCo building being threatened a year or so ago, for example, the post garnered the most visits in the 10-year history of the blog. The building has inspired artists like musician-author Colin Meloy, the Decembrists frontman who made it a veritable character (and cover art) in his children's book series with wife Carson Ellis, The Wildwood Chronicles. For years I've been receiving emails and questions about this building.

No one was ever asking NW Natural to renovate the building and make it habitable again. As Moore noted in her email, it had been abandoned for decades and it would have been almost impossible to get this decayed structure suitable for occupation again. Even to earthquake-protect it would be silly. But preserving the building as a ruin, as organizations like Restore Oregon called for, seemed like a plausible solution. After all, it had already been happening for decades. I'll bet NW Natural's contamination cleanup could have happened around and under the building if the company had truly been committed to the idea of preservation. After all, the company is spending all those years and all that money to clean up that land. Why not make it a park someday, with the GasCo ruins in the middle? But perhaps it's asking a corporation too much to be creative like this. I doubt many other similar companies would have behaved differently.

The GasCo building was on my mind over two weeks in August as I traveled through England. Many of the greatest and most inspiring works of architecture I saw there were ruins. On the Yorkshire coast, for example, I visited the stunning Whitby Abbey, its architecture dating to the 13th century. On a high cliff overlooking the town, it continues to inspire as it has done for centuries. Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula while living in Whitby, even used the abbey ruins as the setting for the opening of the novel as the vampire comes ashore.

Whitby Abbey (photo by Brian Libby)

In another nearby coastal town, Scarborough, I visited the ruins of Scarborough Castle, which dates to the 12th century and also sits on a high cliff overlooking the town. The settlement there even dates back to Roman times some 2,000 years ago. It is this sense of the continuity of history, as well as the compelling frozen drama of these remains, that makes them worth preserving.

The Portland GasCo building's heritage was a tiny fraction compared to those English ruins. Yet because Portland lacks that long history (at least as a white European settlement), it is all the more important that we do protect what heritage we do have. That's what the GasCo's admirers knew in their bones, and that NW Natural's leadership either didn't understand or refused to acknowledge or at least act on. They were caretakers of a part of Portland's cultural heritage, and while they offered to comply if someone else stepped up, their role could have been greater. I hope if any of their leadership reads this post, they will step away from thinking of this incident as PR damage control and start looking in the mirror, as we all should.

By no means can we solely blame NW Natural. To save the GasCo building, we needed everyone to step up. The community could have done more to rally and raise the funds to pay the building's quasi-ransom. Organizers of the Save the GasCo group could have kept fighting instead of all but one of them giving up over six months ago. I certainly could have done more to raise awareness and take a stand. (After all, a Willamette Week headline last year asked, 'Can Brian Libby save the Gas and Coke Building?' Clearly the answer was no.) Perhaps fighting to save Memorial Coliseum for six years has humbled me, or at least taken away some of my energy for these kinds of fights. Even so, no one person can change the course of an owner determined to demolish.

Certainly NW Natural could have done more too. Even if one concedes that it was a reasonable stance not to burden rate-payers with GasCo costs, the company could have been more active in trying to be a partner in raising the money. Instead, they gave a massive figure to the preservationists and pretty much dared them to try and raise it. Now, they're free to raze the building instead - and a beloved part of Portland's history as well.

Comments

Thank you for a thoughtful piece. Sadly, claims of "cleanup" notwithstanding, this building is simply in the way of the PDC's vision of developing the polluted harbor as a brownfield. In the words of Earl Blumenauer, Portland rate payers have already "spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and we haven't even started cleaning yet." More likely, with landmarks out of the way, the city will give (has given?) a large chunk of that money in the form of PDC grants to Schnitzer or Zeidell or any number of its other development interests to speculate on residential properties which they will build on a capped-but-still-dirty site. Then the few dollars of public money left will go to an "educational program" advising nearby residents not to eat the fish, or go outside, or touch anything.

NW Natural gives substantial amounts to charities without considering it an unfair burden on ratepayers. Saving the Gasco "ruins" as a landmark and record of past practices in the energy industry relates more directly to their mission than giving to the arts, I would think.

Since writing this post, I've spoken with Scott Ray Becker, head of the Save the Portland GasCo Building group. He told me that the land underneath the building is not contaminated, and that keeping the building does not conflict with the company's mandated cleanup of the riverside there. He said that NW Natural also has no plans to build another building on that site. They just feared an earthquake bringing the building down onto another more recent building they constructed there. Becker told me that NW Natural is going to spend $2 million on deconstruction, but they wouldn't give the same amount towards what they said was necessary to seismically protect it. And of course seismically protecting the building would have been a silly endeavor anyway. If what Becker is saying is true, this is all the more reason it should have just been left as a ruin, and it actually would have saved NW Natural to do so.

What? The company is not going to spend 2 million to demolish it. In addition the OPUC would have to agree to charge ratepayers the two million to save it. They would not have approved that. Stockholders of the company would not have approved of spending the funds to save it either.

I don't know if this is possible but I've always envisioned a train going from Seaside to downtown Portland with stops in St Helens, Scappoose, etc and this building a train station with connecting buses into St Johns. Commuters going to work each morning could use this train, families on vacation to the coast (short term parking) and just those wanting a day adventure. That's my dream for this beautiful building.

I'm a preservationist. I've got the bills and scars to show for it. And I've appreciated and fantasized about this building for the last 25 years like so many others.

But in 25 years it's sat fallow. In the 15 years I oversaw some of PDXs preservation programs, I'd receive a call of concern or inquiry every few years, but little more. Some of those years were back in the day when protective designations could be applied without owner consent. While that prospective direction was suggested, none bit.

The fact is, the site's been neglected for decades. It's an irreversible amount of deterioration for such a structure.

I consider this more of a blameless inevitability than an act of cultural callousness. The recent efforts to shine a light on the site did so effectively, and forced the appropriate amount of attention to determine - in this iconic case - there truly was no viable path to maintain it as sculpture and vestige.

To the extent we can anthropomorphize this relic, I think it's a fitting analogy that friends and family have gathered around in appropriate appreciation in these - it's final days. It's qualities have been well documented as a result, and this chapter will live on as a significant contribution to it's story, and a meaningful and fitting epitaph.

Good work, all. My genuine condolences, farewell sightly friend, and thanks to the building and its progenitors who provided such lyrical visual fodder over these decades.

Why can't NW Natural Gas in a newsletter and emails, outright ask their customers, if they'll support a slight per customer increase for a year or two, to clean it up? Just ask us. It might be approved, then they'd just charge us to save it.

Jeff, right on! I just came back from 2.5 weeks in Catalunya. Roman walls are present everywhere from Costa Brava southward and are cherished remains going back a thousand years.Even Barcelona reclaimed the bullfighting arena and made it into an awesome shopping center with rooftop restaurants.

Saving the Gasco building is a simple matter, just send out a newsletter to all your customers with a monthly increase amount totaling all the costs involved and Just Ask Us. If its a small amount over 2-5 years why not allow the community to vote on it?
I'll let you know if I hear back Brian.

Granted the GasCo building is in far worse shape than the old PGE Hawthorn building which was utilized by PGE until its sale. ( PGE staff recognized that a developer might be interested in the building once its cleanup was complete) PGE put out a request for proposals for a few selected developers and the site/building was sold, adapted and is now a wonderful creative office space in inner SE.

It seems that with the growth in popularity of Linton and other NW industrial riverfront neighborhoods, that NW Natural could turn this into a similar RFP, if the site is truly "clean". This would cost them very little - time mainly - and could possibly buy the building time and NWN some needed goodwill.

Unfortunately, I feel Mr. Joslin is correct. We should say goodbye, greave for its loss, and impart its varied and expressive images to memory.

What still irks me the most is that I haven't heard a good reason for NW Natural to tear the building down. The land underneath the building is not contaminated, they have no plans for another structure on that land, and the $2 million they're seeking for seismic upgrades is unnecessary for a structure that people simply want to leave as a ruin. If NWN is so concerned about seismic issues, they might turn their attention to the many oil takes sitting on land that will liquefy in a big quake.

I've always liked the design character of this building, with all the little details.

It is a good example of 1900 vintage 3D printing. It is made like a lot of concrete elevators by moving a mold upwards as they poured layers of concrete mix. It is fairly amazing that they molded in all those details.

Re the other Jeff (Jeff B's) reference to other ruins: unfortunately, even this seemingly stout relic was not designed and built with the level of quality and permanence of those ruins across the planet that we fetishize. I've worked on the restoration of turn-of-the-19th/20th century steel and steel-reinforced buildings where all the structure metal had turned to dust (in one case, I could push my finger through what had been in 1896 a one-inch thick web of a steel been as a result of ongoing water penetration). These buildings were just not built in a way that could sit and survive once left to their own - and nature's - devices.

While I'm not aware of any detailed structural assessment here, intuitively I'm pretty certain the decades of neglect and resultant degradation would have been irreparable regardless of seismic/reinforcement efforts.